


Victoria in the Dark Room

by jensening



Series: Chasefield Adventures [18]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Drugs, F/F, Kidnapping, One Shot, Regret, Worry, drunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 08:12:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4911937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jensening/pseuds/jensening
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max wakes up one morning to witness the repercussions of a Vortex Club party from the previous night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Victoria in the Dark Room

Max wakes up in the morning, met with complete silence. Even in her own bedroom, she can feel the regret of the girls in the dorm as if it were her own, their hangovers and bad decisions carrying on to today from the Vortex Club party yesterday night.

Regrets, Max thinks, they should have plenty. After their last little party had caused the death of Kate, Max hates to think what could have gone on last night.

She doesn't feel particularly happy. There is something heavy looming over the dorms, over Blackwell, something unseeable and ungodly, but wholly there. Max can feel it, feel it down to her shivering bones, and it is frightening. She thinks she's just being silly, figures she just woke up on the wrong side of the bed. It's easy to do when your friend just killed themselves a few days ago.

So Max gets up, rubs at her eyes in hopes of rubbing the tired, heavy feeling from her face. She grabs her toothbrush and pulls herself from her room and down the hall, to the bathroom. Her chest is almost hurting, certainly burning, with this horrible sense of dread. Something is wrong. Something isn't right, she knows, but something is never right after a Vortex Club party.

She swings open the door to the bathroom with an uncaring push of her hand, and slowly walks into the room. She'd forgot to put slippers on, so the tiles are cold beneath her feet.

Max makes her way over to a mirror, the same one where Victoria had written the link to Kate's video in gross, blinding red lipstick. She stares at herself in it. Her skin is a little paler than it normally is, the bags under her eyes a little heavier, her hair a little messier than usual, her sharp blue eyes now dull and uncoloured. Max wets her toothbrush, squirts her toothpaste across it, wets it again. Just as she is bringing it to her mouth, Taylor and Courtney enter.

They don't pay her any attention, but rather check their hungover appearances in the mirror – Max notices the creases on their faces, worry or disgust? – and then turn towards one another.

"I could have sworn Nathan said he'd take Victoria home last night?"

Max's heart stops. She keeps her toothbrush moving, but now it is slack and slow, staring at the two girls through the mirror.

"Totally." Courtney replies. Her voice is different, sounds different, has this high-pitched sort of worry concealed within it, and a low overtone of hate, panic, regret? She is trying to disguise it, pretend it isn't there, Max can hear her trying. The way her mouth moves doesn't fit the words she is saying, like audio and video out of sync. "But, like, Taylor – no one has seen her. Nathan is saying he never gave her a lift, she isn't in her room or class and –"

"Don't, Courtney." Taylor raises her hand, turns away from Courtney. "She probably just found some hot guy, went back to his dorm room. She's probably with Zachary."

"But she's not." Courtney replies. "She's not, Taylor, we already asked!"

"Well she can't just be fucking gone!" Taylor yells. She balls her hand into a fist, hits it against the egg-white metal of the sink. Her voice is a cry. "She's my – she's my best friend, Court, she's not gone –"

"Taylor –"

Courtney takes a step forward, a hand out, an attempt to comfort her. Taylor swats her away. Her make up is running, her face is warped, her mouth is trembling. Her body is slouched, the usual confidence and proud posture, gone.

"She's fucking gone, Courtney!" Taylor cries, waving her hands around with a need to do something, walking erratically back and forth, her body twitching with unsettled feelings. "No one has seen her since last night – and you fucking know what happened to the last person to go missing at a Vortex Club party, Courtney, she fucking killed herself."

Max's toothbrush falls out of her mouth, lands in the sink with a clatter. Numbly, she spits out her toothpaste, wipes her mouth. Taylor and Courtney stare at her now.

"Max!" Taylor says. She's shaking, but at the recognition of Max she is trying to compose herself, appear normal and happy and bitchy like usual, but she cannot do it. Max stares at her vacantly, her lips quivering with horror, disbelief, her mind pierced with thought after thought after thought –

"I'm sure Victoria's okay, Max." Courtney says. "And – and I'm sure she didn't go get with some guy, like Taylor said. We're just worried about her –"

"Victoria –" Taylor wipes at her eyes. She's crying again, trying so hard not to. Trying so hard that Max thinks with some bitterness that it's pathetic – when Kate died, Max let herself cry all she fucking wanted. Now Victoria – Victoria's gone, what will she do?

Her girlfriend is fucking missing, and she had promised Max that she wouldn't get drunk –

"Victoria really loves you." Taylor finishes. "She does – I – I'm sorry I said that I just –"

"It's fine." Max says. She picks up her toothbrush, clutches it in her hand tightly. She sombrely walks towards them, stops in front of them. "Can I get past?" she asks.

They part immediately.

Max passes them.

She leaves the bathroom. Everyone is still in their rooms. The hall is empty. Max walks down it, slow, steady, feels her finger tap impatiently against her thigh as she walks. She stops when she reaches the middle space between her room at Victoria's, at the end of the hall. She turns left, not right, left, and opens the door.

She makes her way into the room. She looks around – the photo montage, now with several of Victoria, smiling, and Max next to her. One of them kissing. She looks at the perfectly arranged desk, the made bed, the giant posters on the wall – looks at it all, this room, and feels her face curl in sorrow. Collapses onto Victoria's bed. Wraps herself in the covers.

Her legs creep up and meet her chest, her arms wrap so tightly around them that it's painful, her hand grips at her wrist so tightly it turns white, her head slouching into her knees. Max feels herself cry, each tear heavy with a part of her soul – her mind, body, empties with every tear that leaves her. First Kate – now Victoria – then who? Who else did she have left for them to take from her?

Max head rests against Victoria's duvet. It smells clean, like lavender.

She hears the door open.

She looks up –

It's Taylor.

"I'm sorry, Max." she says, slumping down on the bed next to her. "I'm so fucking sorry – I don't know what happened, she didn't even have that much to drink and – and she was just out of it. I should have watched her–"

"It's okay." Max mumbles. Her body feels so cold, so numb and tingly.

"I swear to you, Max, I only saw her have one glass of wine. She told me she wasn't drinking because you'd asked her not to –"

Max jolts. Unfolds from herself. Stares at Taylor with these empty, cold eyes, now sparking with possibilities. "One glass of wine?"

"Yes!" Taylor replies. "She got totally out of it after that I – I don't know what fucking happ –"

Taylor seems to reach the same conclusion that Max has. She burst out crying again. "Shit!" she cries, shaking her head back and forth, like it's not possible, like it hasn't happened before, like the Vortex parties aren't fucking evil – "She was – shit, Max, she – she was fucking drugged?" her voice breaks. "Do you think that's possible?"

"Kate was drugged." Max replies. She feels sober now, with thought, but numb with sadness. "She said she was taken somewhere white and bright, and woke up the next day feeling disgusting. She was purposely drugged, taken somewhere."

"So Victoria could come back!?"

Max clenches her jaw. She stares at Taylor: Taylor, with her wide, hopeful eyes, running black mascara and quivering lips. She stares at a girl so hopeful for possibilities, so broken knowing they might not come.

"Yes." Max says, hoarse. Her voice cracks, breaks, her eyes dark, but she says this lie, this hopeful, ignorant plea, because Taylor needs to believe this. Max hates herself for saying it. "She could come back." She hesitates, wonders if she should say what she's about the say, wonder if she should presume like this. Says it anyway. "But if she does, she won't be the same. She'll - she might be like Kate." Max feels the tears well in her eyes, her throat swell. "She'll want to die."

Taylors head falls in her hands. "What do we do?" she squeaks.

Max looks away. She stands, hands into fists, looks around the room. And then she looks at the montage on the wall. She walks to it. She stares at the photo of Victoria down the beach, Victoria wearing overly-flashy sunglasses that were too big for her face, pouting jokingly, and Max, kissing her cheek. Max reaches out, thumbs it, pulls it off of the wall.

"We find her." Max replies, folding the picture into her hand.


End file.
